This is one of a series of paintings by Dubuffet in which women’s bodies are flattened and exposed, subverting accepted ideals of female beauty. The distinctive surface of these works was created by applying a special paste that repelled oil paint. As the layers of paint and glaze dried, they continually reassembled themselves into new patterns and textures. Dubuffet wrote that these patterns ‘have transported me into an invisible world of fluids circulating in the bodies and around them, and have revealed to me a whole active theatre of facts, which perform, I am certain, at some level of life.’